Two Eyes Cenote [b] sooner or later

EARLY BIRTH!! welcome to the world babies :D <3 set for the early hours of march 17th! please let puppies + khusobek post first, and then AW to members of muat-riya as well as any visitors from akashingo! birth order is randomized!

there were many things about womanhood that inji had yet to understand.
in the passing weeks, the maidservant's stomach had swelled and fattened to the point her back had begun to pierce her with a throbbing pain if she sat weirdly. her appetite wavered between famished and sick at the mere thought of food, and she often called @Tavina for assistance when she sought a relief agent for her pain.
but she spent many nights talking and singing to her unborns, always anxious to see their beautiful faces. when they began to kick, she called upon her betrothed to press his face against her side. when they begged her to rest, she would laugh; how can you be tired when i'm doing all the walking? some could say she was privileged despite her class, always doted on and supported. pregnancy did not seem so bad.
until she began to labor.
she felt it for the first time when she was straightening out her whelping den; a sharp, rattling shock that hit her pelvis and sent her nearly tumbling to the ground. she felt it in her muscles, in her bones, in her cartilage, and then it was gone — until it wasn't, and it came to her again when she settled beside @Khusobek for dinner. i think it's time, she remembered whispering to him through gritted teeth, eyes squeezed tightly and muscles strained —
for the rest of the following morning and well into the afternoon, she resigned herself to her secluded nursery in the back halls of the cenote. she could not see, could not hear herself screaming and swearing and begging every possible deity to make it stop;
but as time ticks beyond midnight, she looks down at the ruddy shape of @Safiya, painted in a striking crimson as she begins to clean away the mess. oh, habibi, it's a girl, her eyes are half-lidded and glassy as she turns her head in search of her beloved. you're a father. and she, now, a mother.
her respite is brief. as she fights the exhaustion, the brutal bite comes to her again in a flurry. burning, burning, and then there is a second; she introduces @Kheti to the warmth of her bosom and upon his red-painted back drops soft, hot tears. you look just like your daddy, baby.
hours later, as the morning begins to paint the room in beams of sunburst, @Kiyya has his face swept clean and is brought into the light. inji weeps as she stares at the lilac-blue bundle, the soft eggshell that paints his tiny face — he looks just like her auntie, someone he will never know. she wonders, through it all, if the gods are real; if they sent him to her for a reason.
dawn passes into dewy spring morning, and by now inji can hardly find it within herself to breathe. more, more children still; her body aflame with an otherworldly exhaustion, she begs for tavina to do something, anything; the stubborn @Tiye is the last to come punching into the mortal world, and inji can do nothing but marvel with wide eyes. you look like me.
reeling, she feels half-alive and yet reborn at the same time, flooded with a smorgasbord of feelings she did not know could ever be so intense, so precious, so raw. her body aches. the fear slowly trickles into a quiet euphoria. and through the stench of blood and afterbirth she can see the four faces, the little pieces of two souls who happened to cross and build them from nothing, and she decides then that there has never been a more worthy price to pay.
his. hers. theirs.
i love you, i love you, i love you